Salon Kitty (1977)
Blue Underground DVD (region 1)
d. Tinto Brass; pr. Ermanno Donati, Giulio Sbarigia; scr. Antonio Colantuoni, Tinto Brass, Ennio De Concini, Maria Pia Fusco; novel. Peter Norden; prod d. Ken Adam; ph. Silvano Ippoliti; m. Fiorenzo Carpi, Jose Padilla; ed. Tinto Brass; cast. Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, Teresa Ann Savoy, John Steiner, Sara Sperati, John Ireland, Tina Aumont, Bekim Fehmiu (133 mins)
In the mid-1970s, Italian film saw a distressing rise in explicit exploitation. In particular, there emerged three films which brought a troubling sexual intensity to depictions of Nazism.
These films – Salon Kitty, The Night Porter and Salo: 120 Days of Sodom – launched what would be a virtual flood of Nazi sexploitation, controversially exploring the still-taboo realm of concentration camp erotica. Torture, sado-masochism and an assortment of violent and aberrant sexual perversions were suddenly prominent on screen, their explicitness legitimized in part by the legalization of hardcore pornography. Although many subsequent movies were cheap, shoddy emphases in gratuitous sadism, the three main films were truly distinguished works by important Italian directors and proceeded to garner much international attention. However, the boom in Nazi sexploitation proved brief, lasting only several years before again entering the realm of the taboo, but these three films would continue to mark their directors’ careers. Salon Kitty on its part elevated cult figure Tinto Brass to international prominence, from where he would eventually be considered one of Europe’s most provocative eroticists and it was reportedly on seeing Salon Kitty that led Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione to develop an interest in Brass that would eventually lead to their troubled collaboration on that visionary pinnacle of hardcore porn epics, Caligula.
Ostensibly inspired by a true story, Salon Kitty takes place in Berlin cabaret society circa 1939 and chronicles the effects of the outbreak of World War Two on the remnants of this culture.
It begins happily, with a proud cabaret owner (Ingrid Thulin) thriving in decadence. A Nazi commander (John Steiner) announces to his subordinate (Helmut Berger) a plan to form a brothel to cater specifically to Nazi officers on leave. He intends this brothel to be stocked by the finest National Socialist girls available. Berger begins recruitment, and soon a young bourgeois woman (Teresa Ann Savoy) volunteers and is put through a regimen in a kind of sexual laboratory. As war breaks out, Thulin’s club is disbanded and she is put in charge of the title brothel. Soon it attracts officers from the German High Command; but unknown to Thulin, her clients’ sessions with the prostitutes are being recorded by Nazi spies under Berger’s control. Savoy does her duty but soon falls for one bitter and disillusioned officer (Bekim Fehmiu) who has expressed his disapproval of the Nazi war machine. From him she hears of the atrocities of war, slowly undermining her idealism. Berger is jealous of their developing relationship and seeks to win Savoy for himself, impressing her with his power. However, when she realizes Fehmiu’s fate she seeks revenge on Berger. To do so, she informs Thulin who enlists the help of a devoted patron (John Ireland).
Salon Kitty is a fascinating dissection of sexual power within a fascistic ideology, nicely chronicling the slide from the creative cultural decadence of German cabaret society to the rise of fascism, slyly insinuating Nazism as a sexual perversion of power.
Thus, the selection process for the prostitutes parallels the obsession with racial purity. Into this, Savoy is a naïve innocent, a victim of Nazi ideology and ready to prostitute herself for her Fuhrer and for the much vaunted catch-cry of “National Socialism”. The politicization of decadence seems for Brass the function of sexual power in the Nazi era, yet such sexual power reveals only the basest, most insincere humanity: for Brass thus, a political ideology or ethos is measured (and represented best) by its approach to, and appropriation of, sexual power. The will to power is thus the essence of humankind’s base perversion, and Brass has an overwhelming contempt for fascist hypocrisy, hence his sustained joy in revealing Berger’s dilemma as a man of ostensible power yet tormented by his own feelings of sexual inadequacy. For Berger, power is simply, and trivially, about the restoration of a lost potency by a kind of monstrous overcompensation. By extension thus, Nazism in this film is the surrogate regimentation of sexual potency: to control sexual desire is be truly in power although to do so is to loose a paradoxical flux of repression and decadence.
Power brings with it the desire for sexual indulgence and a mad, megalomaniacal sense of superiority, even self-deification.
Yet, amidst this examination of the machinations of power and sexual displacement in a seemingly sterile fascist order, Brass concentrates on Savoy’s dilemma and in so doing explores the facile stupidity of the Nazi ideal of self-sacrifice for a greater cause. Thus, instead of sacrifice and submission, Savoy learns manipulation, self-assertion and the vengeful use of sexual power as she prepares to humiliate Berger. Savoy’s triumph is that she refuses to surrender her personality to or be broken and humiliated by this Nazi (more than she already has been by her initial devotion to the cause) and rebels against patriarchal sexual control. The film’s extraordinary sense of grotesque sexuality is Brass’ ultimate joke on the concept of “degenerate art” and his contemptuous exposition of Nazi sexual immorality. Berger is a monster in this film, a petty officer who can only achieve satisfaction through the forcible humiliation and submission of others to his will – in his dilemma is found the sado-masochistic sexual essence of Nazism and the implied impetus behind the concentration camp as the madness of sexual power: as once loosed, sexual power is anarchy resented, desired and potentially beyond control. The fascination and repulsion for sexual power runs throughout Brass’ work.
DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced visual transfer is exceptional in original ratio and with scenes removed from the initial US release now fully restored. It features several unusual cabaret numbers and a stunning evocation of sexual decadence segueing into political ideology almost as an implied cause and effect. Brass has an extraordinary sense of sexual tableaux and a rather heavy-handed sense of irony (cutting from a Nazi lecture on racial purity to a slaughterhouse). This sexual grotesquery anticipates Caligula and suggests the voyeuristic appeal of human baseness. The bizarre sexual prison / laboratory scenes make for a fine degeneration of Nazi ideals of purity and there is an emphasis on the process needed to beautify these whores to be the perfect illusions of sexual desirability. Much of the film’s impact though, comes from the production design by Ken Adam (who designed many of the James Bond films) and his distinctive sense of symmetry and forced perspective. The pristine sterility of the Nazi offices (with the formal austerity of white floors, black uniforms and red flag) challenges the colorful cabaret decadence, and there is also a difference in look between the initial cabaret and the appropriated Nazi brothel. Mirrors and other distortion motifs are frequent and there are ironic, telling instances of layered imagery (as when a projected image of Hitler is seen over a naked whore about to service her client).
Sound
The sound transfer is equally fine in crisp Dolby Digital mono. Of major delight are the stylized cabaret numbers, far more risqué versions of decadent German culture than found elsewhere. These unusual musical numbers recur throughout the film, almost as a chorus and thus a form of punctuation. Communal brothel atmosphere is vivid and nicely contrasted to the illusion of privacy and solace in the individual rooms. Isolated details standout and are often ironic, as in the sly sound of buzzing flies during a medical presentation and the pigs’ squeal that segues over a bourgeois family’s dinner. Indeed, a pig’s squeal is used again for similar effect over the film’s final scenes and is as a means of signaling Brass’ contempt for many of his characters. Patriotic German period music is also used in aural design which makes this film seem a bleakly ironic comedy, although in the sexual dungeon scenes the sound use turns ominous and sinister, almost abstracted. The end makes pointed use of a tape-recorded voice as the spy is spied upon, his illusion of power undone by his own sexual pettiness. Voices are always pronounced, ranging from the shrill Fehmiu to the rebellious, demure and finally manipulative Savoy. For added interest the film is available in both dubbed and original Italian versions, with some of the subtleties of translation reportedly contributing to the respective versions in different ways.
Special Features
There is an assortment of special features on this two-disc Limited Edition DVD of Salon Kitty. Included are international and US trailers as well as a biography of director Brass. Most features are, however, found on the bonus disc. There is an informative documentary featurette titled “Inside Salon Kitty” which has an interview with the infamous director in which he discusses the origins of the characters and the truthful basis behind the film, his working relationship to the actors and the casting of Teresa Ann Savoy in particular (she and John Steiner would return for Caligula). He talks of his thematic interest in laying bare what he feels if the rottenness of power and on emphasizing intentionally shocking scenes. He talks of depravity on film, the difference between erotica and pornography, the use of footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, his frequent theme of the sexual perversion of power, his preference for editing his own films and his working relationship with production designer Ken Adam. In addition to these featurettes are: three radio spots (for the initial US release, then titled Madam Kitty); three photo galleries (posters and stills, including the press book; Adam’s production design sketches; and Jost Jakob’s costume design sketches) concerning the film’s unique look. Of tremendous interest is a featurette on the contribution of noted set designer Ken Adam.
In this additional featurette, “Designing Salon Kitty”, is an extensive interview with Adam in which he discusses working with Brass after having toiled with perfectionist Stanley Kubrick on Barry Lyndon, the use of locations and how Brass gave him complete creative freedom. He talks of the differences between the designs of the various salons (the first intimate art nouveau, the second more stridently art deco), reveals his original production sketches, talks of Brass’ love of mirrors (which the director shares with Kubrick) and discusses the use of forced perspective in set design. He reveals that he had to leave before filming was complete and that one set in the film was not his creation and that the difference does show. Indeed it does. He admits that he remains impressed with the film, has no problem with the erotic and grotesque aspects and still finds it balletic and a “great work”. Also available for DVD-Rom viewers is “The Story of Salon Kitty” from a now-rare 1975 book on the film by photographer Fabian Cevados and writer Enrico Massi and presented in its entirety with a new English translation of the original Italian text. However, this last feature has proven inaccessible to some reviewers and thus difficult to verify.
In the time since the Limited Edition DVD release, Blue Underground has released a version with an alternate “collectible” cover slip although otherwise the content apparently remains the same.
